Ursula Holden

Subsequent novels were published by Methuen.  In 2013 Virago reprinted Tin Toys Trilogy: Tin Toys (1986) Unicorn Sisters (1988) A Bubble Garden (1989).

Holden's dedication to writing was recognised by the Royal Society of Literature with the award of a fellowship in 2010.

Throughout the 1990s her writing space was her room at a nursing home in London and she wrote daily:  'I write to live and live to write’.  Intermittently she wrote for The Oldie magazine.

During the 1980s she wrote introductions to several novels by Barbara Comyns published by Virago.

After World War II, Holden went to Ireland where she became a model in Dublin's Art School. She was married to William Sydney Dixon for twenty three years (divorced 1970) and had 3 daughters. She lived in London all her adult life.

It was at a creative writing class at Chiswick Polytechnic in 1968 that she began to realize her talent for writing. After being signed by Andrew Hewson of the John Johnson Literary Agency, her first three novels were published by London Magazine Editions. Admiring her work, the editor of London Magazine, Alan Ross, fostered Holden's career until his death in 2001.

Ursula R. Holden (8 August 1921 – 2 May 2020) was an English novelist, author of thirteen novels often inspired by her time spent in Ireland. Her first novel, Endless Race, was published when she was 54.

Ursula Holden was born in August 1921, in Bridport, Dorset, the fourth daughter of five children of Una and Andrew Holden. Her father worked abroad, mostly in Egypt and Holden was educated at home by a governess before going to high school, aged 11, and then to board at St Michael's School, Bognor Regis, at the age of 15.